slow....2 year old iMac i5

[martinchivers]

my mac is running slowly & I cannot seem to get to the bottom of it. I run mac cleaner & have 12 gig of ram, but still has the coloured spinning wheel at times. I am thinking of replacing the hard drive for an SSD. advisable? easy? what do I need to buy? Incidentally, the hard drive has 800 gig of data on it. could that be the problem, will be removing a lot soon anyway. I looked for ssd's on Dabs.com, but they are all 2.5 inch. what size is the drive inside the mac?

Cant think of anything else to add.

its a 2.8 ghz intel. i5. running 10.6.8

 

[maflynn]

Check out the activity monitor and see if there's anything taking up cpu cycles. Make sure you alter the setting to see everything not just your processes.

 

[martinchivers]

thanks......

i have used activity monitor before, but don't necessarily know how to interpret the info!

 

[page404]

Sort the column with "CPU %" (or something similar) so that the highest values are shown at the top. Check if there is a program that is using, say, 25% or more on a regular basis.

 

[martinchivers]

HP shortcut manager...99%

I have experience this before & turned off the scanner buttons.

HP software is terrible!

I ideally want the scanner sitting dormant, not switched on, not doing anything AT ALL, unless I launch the software to do a scan. Can I do that? otherwise, its going in the bin!

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just checked - buttons are turned off. and the scanner isnt even switched on.

 

[rkaufmann87]

my mac is running slowly & I cannot seem to get to the bottom of it. I run mac cleaner & have 12 gig of ram, but still has the coloured spinning wheel at times. I am thinking of replacing the hard drive for an SSD. advisable? easy? what do I need to buy? Incidentally, the hard drive has 800 gig of data on it. could that be the problem, will be removing a lot soon anyway. I looked for ssd's on Dabs.com, but they are all 2.5 inch. what size is the drive inside the mac?

Cant think of anything else to add.

its a 2.8 ghz intel. i5. running 10.6.8

First rid yourself of Mac Cleaner and if you run antivirus apps or other third party utility maintenance app. They're a total waste of resources and unnecessary. OS X is not like MS Windows that relies on 3rd party utilities to run well. Follow the developers instructions for uninstalling, if you have any installed.

Next, how much RAM does your iMac have. If you are still on the base 4GB of RAM that could be an issue too. Please use Activity Monitor (Applications - Utilities - Activity Monitor) and carefully read Apple's advice in:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342

 

[martinchivers]

yes, I do have mac cleaner & I do use it, but never seen a benefit from it.

OK, will uninstall.

my mac has 12 gig of ram. However when I installed it i saw NOT dicernable difference in performance. It is recognised though.

 

[martinchivers]

scanner...

how do I uninstall mac cleaner, properly? I normally drag the icon into the trash.

Checking the activity monitor, its flashing & bouncing around, but Disc activity, CPU & Memory, all have one thing in common. that that HP shortcut manager is always (nearly) at the top & has been as high as 99.3%. that is without it even being switched on. As a photographer, I DO USE IT! but will get rid of it, if there is no way of stopping it draining my power. Would it be any better on my PC?

HP want shooting over this!

 

[forty2j]

What HP product are you running, exactly?

I have a Photosmart e-All-in-One 5510, which connects wirelessly for both printing and scanning, and I have no "HP Shortcut Manager" in my Activity Monitor. I do have "HP Device Monitor", running at all of 1.5% CPU.

Unrelatedly, random spinning beach balls can be a sign of a failing hard drive. Boot off your OS X recovery / retail disk and run disk utility for a full HDD repair, and see if it complains about anything.

Regarding purchasing the SSD, your iMac has a 3.5" slot, but there are adapters for installing 2.5" drives (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSD2535BKT/). The bigger problem is that the iMac has some additional pins on the connector that are used to read temperature, and if those aren't connected, your iMac fans will spin at max speed. If you look around on this site, you'll find instructions on how to short the pins so you don't have that problem.

 

[martinchivers]

HP scanjet 4850

within the software in applications, there isnt a specific icon.

Uninstalled mac cleaner.

will run disc checker now. Do I HAVE TO boot from the disc? I have never done that. I have 2 dvds, in my pack.

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was going to run the disc utility. have gone there, but now, not sure what to do.

in "First aid", do I verify disk permissions
or
repair disc
or verify disc?

 

[forty2j]

within the software in applications, there isnt a specific icon.

Uninstalled mac cleaner.

will run disc checker now. Do I HAVE TO boot from the disc? I have never done that. I have 2 dvds, in my pack.

----------

was going to run the disc utility. have gone there, but now, not sure what to do.

in "First aid", do I verify disk permissions
or
repair disc
or verify disc?

If you're running disk utility running normally, you can "verify disc" which will report any problems, but you can't "repair disc". You have to boot off the DVD in order to repair.

Verify/repair disk permissions isn't a terrible idea, but likely isn't your problem here.

 

[martinchivers]

i see!

will do.

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...."appears to be OK"

 

[martinchivers]

Followed this....Much better (havent tested the scanner to see if it works!)

A solution can be found here: OS X scanner driver maxes CPU

Open: Activity Monitor
Quit: HPShortcutManagerStartup and HPShortcutManager

Open: Finder
Go to: /Library/Application Support/Hewlett-Packard/
Remove: HPShortcutManagerStartup

This should stop HPShortcutManager from automatically starting up next time you reboot.
I have also removed HPShortcutManager just to be sure — not a problem because I don't use the shortcut buttons.

 

[martinchivers]

update...

fully tested today. MUCH IMPROVED! So this worked. Thanks to everyone who offered help!